Hosting provider with good stats reporting

DalaiLama

Novice

Posts: 17

3+ Months Ago

Can anyone suggest a good host that offers good stats and reporting (preferably with Webtrends or Urchin)

Our current host is Interland, but they:
1. Do not log all of the necessary fields in their log files (i.e., cookies)
2. Delete log files after 30 days
3. Have an implementation of Webtrends that does not work. This is not a complaint about Webtrends. It is a complaint about the hosting provider because their install of Webtrends never works.

Good stats and stats reporting are very important to us.

Thanks.

Fitness4Living

Proficient

Posts: 330

Loc: Belfast, Ireland

3+ Months Ago

thanks for your input, i understand concerns people have but i have learned to respect Ozzu and its rules as it is a quality forum that has plenty of good info and is very friendly, i dont mean any harm and am just recommending a service to someone who asked for recommendations.

CartikaHosting

Proficient

Posts: 455

Loc: Wishing I was in Kicking Horse

3+ Months Ago

Quote:

thanks for your input, i understand concerns people have but i have learned to respect Ozzu and its rules as it is a quality forum that has plenty of good info and is very friendly, i dont mean any harm and am just recommending a service to someone who asked for recommendations.

Ill let a supermod decide this one, however, you really shouldnt be promoting a service which you will be benefiting from with the link in your signature. Although your intentions are honorable, the intention of the rule is to prevent this forum from turning into a center for mass spamming...

However, Webalizer is not an appropriate web analytics program for the original posters requirements...

Quote:

Can anyone suggest a good host that offers good stats and reporting (preferably with Webtrends or Urchin)

Our current host is Interland, but they: 1. Do not log all of the necessary fields in their log files (i.e., cookies) 2. Delete log files after 30 days 3. Have an implementation of Webtrends that does not work. This is not a complaint about Webtrends. It is a complaint about the hosting provider because their install of Webtrends never works.

WebTrends and Urchin are certainly 2 of the best web anlytics programs available. Personally, I am partial to Urchin - as the extent and depth of their analytics are second to none...

Regarding your current situation - deleting logs older then 30 days really is unacceptable, as you will have no history of trends over time, etc.... Additionally, if they dont have the stats program installed and integrated properly, it really isnt going to be overly useful

All H-Sphere hosts have the ability to integrate Urchin - however, not all of them of actually bought the licenses. This may be a good place to start though...

Hopefully this helps...

DalaiLama

Novice

Posts: 17

3+ Months Ago

I appreciate the input.

DalaiLama

Novice

Posts: 17

3+ Months Ago

At this point I'm considering purchasing a web server, firewall and database server to manage my current hosting accounts and run Urchin without losing content.

I'm stressing over this.

CartikaHosting

Proficient

Posts: 455

Loc: Wishing I was in Kicking Horse

3+ Months Ago

DalaiLama wrote:

At this point I'm considering purchasing a web server, firewall and database server to manage my current hosting accounts and run Urchin without losing content.

Theres a few things you can do to ensure your stress levels are kept under control

1) Purchase a shared or reseller account based on the resources you need (ie do not shop for the most for the least)
2) If performance and reliability are a concern for you - look for a provider that offers clustered services - meaning that http, dns, db, em, etc - are all run off of separate servers - this will allow you to gain the benefits of being in a cluster, without accrueing all the costs typically associated with this sort of infrastructure
3) you SHOULD not lose content with Urchin - ever - I mean sure - sometimes an upgrade will go bad, and no new data will be collected for a day or 2 until the bugs are worked out - but, this sort of thing should be isolated - this has happened to us once in 2.5 years of offering Urchin and once with AWStats around 4 years ago... Im not quite sure why your current provider is dropping logs older then 30 days - the only thing I can think of is that they are oversold on disk space and really need to cut down their usage - though - deleting analytics logs seems silly, as theu really do not take up alot of space...

Good question. I'm not sure how to quantify our resource requirements, but I can approach this question from a different perspective. We are a Marketing Company; that means that we need high quality and stable marketing data with which to work. Our current provider (Interland) does not give us this flexibility.

CartikaHosting wrote:

1) Purchase a shared or reseller account based on the resources you need (ie do not shop for the most for the least)

We considered that, but once you start adding things (bandwitdh, firewall, etc.) it can become cost prohibitive very quickly.

CartikaHosting wrote:

2) If performance and reliability are a concern for you - look for a provider that offers clustered services - meaning that http, dns, db, em, etc - are all run off of separate servers - this will allow you to gain the benefits of being in a cluster, without accrueing all the costs typically associated with this sort of infrastructure

I'd love to evaluate vendors who offer features like these.

CartikaHosting wrote:

3) you SHOULD not lose content with Urchin - ever - I mean sure - sometimes an upgrade will go bad, and no new data will be collected for a day or 2 until the bugs are worked out - but, this sort of thing should be isolated - this has happened to us once in 2.5 years of offering Urchin and once with AWStats around 4 years ago... Im not quite sure why your current provider is dropping logs older then 30 days - the only thing I can think of is that they are oversold on disk space and really need to cut down their usage - though - deleting analytics logs seems silly, as theu really do not take up alot of space...

I think the answer to why our provider drops logs is that in order to be the largest provider and offer features and services, interland must micromanage every feature to make it as small an expense an possible. When you bundl the feature and price it in accordance with industry standard, your revenue will be affected by...

ok, ok you got me...they price cheap so that they can make more money.

Quality and performance adds expense which lowers profit.

Still stressed.

CartikaHosting

Proficient

Posts: 455

Loc: Wishing I was in Kicking Horse

3+ Months Ago

Quote:

I'd love to evaluate vendors who offer features like these.

Search for any host utilizing H-Sphere - 90% of them have clustered their services.

You can also look for Plesk providers - Plesk also has this capability - though, I am not certain how many have taken advantage of it yet (as its still fairly new with Plesk)

Quote:

ok, ok you got me...they price cheap so that they can make more money.

That may or may not be the case - I would think that they are running into diskspace limitations and are trying to reduce their usage (as a server can only physically handle so much storage) - though, this is just a working theory...

Quote:

Still stressed.

Honestly - there is no reason to be stressed - do you have any idea how much space and bandwith you are currently using? This aside - the rest of your requirements really arent that difficult to accomodate - and since you are an interland client, I do not believe that your resource requirements will be unreasonable...